


Your Fits and Your Shades of Blue

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:12:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8914900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: When you meet she is sloppy drunk, half lying in someone’s lap, bony feet propped up on the coffee table. Her laugh is a rattly guffaw several times too large for her ribcage. It’s what draws you out of your refuge in the kitchen; it’s annoying and you are going to make it stop. 
(Terezi goes to a party and meets a natural disaster of a girl)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zee/gifts).



> For Zee, who is rad and shares my love of terrible women doing terrible things to each other. Merry Christmas!

When you meet she is sloppy drunk, half lying in someone’s lap, bony feet propped up on the coffee table. Her laugh is a rattly guffaw several times too large for her ribcage. It’s what draws you of your refuge in the kitchen; it’s annoying and you are going to make it stop. 

You aren’t in a party mood. You are only here because Nepeta is. The house belongs to her friend (Cousin? Boyfriend? Parole officer?), a large grad student with a sweaty handshake and an impressive mullet. But you’ve reached the saturation point of your introversion; you like your alone time but any more in your apartment and you’d be licking at the walls and scribbling on the ceiling. 

Page one of the college handbook: (do they even have those? They probably do and they are probably stupid) until you have friends, freeload off your roommate’s friends. 

Even if they have mullets or bony feet.

You have had a beer and a half, and you are small enough and drink rarely enough to be feeling it. Alcohol never does what they tell you it is supposed to--i.e. make you warm and loose and ready to mingle. It draws you more tightly into yourself, makes you cling hard to your equilibrium. 

The girl laughs again, shaking the bottle she has tucked into her armpit, spilling onto the couch. Every so often her feet will kick spectacularly and knock something off the table--a stack of _Scientific America_ , the TV remote, an ugly figurine that might be a donkey. It’s hard to tell. 

Despite the noise, you sit down on a cushioned chair. This room is crowded enough that you don’t think anyone will talk to you. The laughing girl is holding their attention, telling some slurred, rambling story about what may be a criminal enterprise or a D and D campaign. The boy sitting beside her is nodding along, stealing unsubtle glances down her shirt. 

She pauses to take a swig of whatever is in the bottle, and the guy leans in to whisper in her ear. He is wearing a fitted t-shirt and a long purple scarf, even though it hasn’t dipped below seventy in the last week. 

The girl laughs another messy laugh and elbows him solidly in the face. Fast, efficient, and in full view of witnesses. A hideous crack--possibly blood, you aren’t close enough to tell. 

The guy crashes drunkenly from the couch, hands clutching his face. “You fuckin bitch--!” 

Her laughter is nearing hysteria. There is some outrage from the assembled, and also laughter. Someone applauds. A couple people follow the boy out. 

The girl stops laughing abruptly. Then she looks at you. You get the momentarily weightless impression that she had done all of that for your benefit, like a cat dropping a mouse at your feet. But that’s absurd. You’ve never even met before. 

You wake up your phone and bring up your email, letting yourself get lost in correspondence. Not the best way to make friends, but you’re here, aren’t you? That’s something. 

The next time you look up, the room has emptied out. It’s quieter so you expect the laughing girl to be gone too, but she is still here, and now she is certainly looking at you. You’re alone and the music has gone liquid and slow, some trancey nonsense that Dave would adore or condemn, depending on his mood. Her hair--she has quite a lot of that--gleams in the fairy lights, oily enough that it looks damp. Or maybe it is damp. You would have to touch it to know for sure. 

“You don’t look like a freshman,” she says. She taps a long finger on the side of her bottle. There isn’t anyone else she could be talking to but you are still surprised. 

“A senior, actually. I’m a transfer.” 

“You transferred in senior year?” 

“Yes.” 

“Fucking why?” 

“Reasons.” 

She doesn’t just roll her eyes, she rolls her whole head. “Which are?” 

“None of your business. Why did you punch that guy?” 

“Who, Eridan?” As if he is only the latest in a long line of punched guys. “He deserved it. And if he didn’t, he would have by the end of the night.” 

“That isn’t how desert works, I believe.” Alcohol ups your snideness level considerably. 

She laughs again, but this laugh is deep and slow. A whisper instead of a shout. “Okay, tiny weird girl I don’t know. My house, my rules.” 

“You’re...Vriska.” Equius’s housemate, the one who sleeps until 2pm and drinks some weird tea that makes the kitchen smell like allspice and has only ever spoken to Nepeta to tell her to shut the fuck up. 

“Yeah.” She tips the bottle toward her mouth but it doesn’t really make contact. “You’re Terezi Pyrope.” 

It shouldn’t phase you that she knows that--Nepeta has probably mentioned you. There aren’t many girls under five foot two with cherry red canes and tinted glasses running around campus; at least you hope there aren’t. But you feel a lurch in your guts, like a hook has wrapped around your intestines and the line is slowly going taut. 

“Hey, Pyrope.” She bares her teeth in what might supposed to be a sexy expression. “Want to make out?” 

You have heard tell that college is supposed to be a bawdy rollercoaster of casual sex and jello shots, but this is the first time anyone who’s last name isn’t Strider has ever asked you that. No, is the right answer, isn’t it? Because Vriska is drunk and rude and smashes elbows in faces for future-crimes. Because she has spilled more liquor across her thighs than she has gotten in her mouth. Her eyes are deep-set and she smiles with one side of her mouth. Her legs, fingers, and nose are all longer than they should be. There is something skulking about her, something spidery. Her hair is stuck to her forehead in sweaty clumps. She is unnerving in every sense of the word, and you are stupidly attracted to her. 

“I am not nearly drunk enough to kiss perfect strangers.” 

“Then catch up.” 

You wrinkle your nose. “I have a confession to make.” You nudge at your half empty bottle. “I hate beer. I have always hated it.” 

Vriska taps a fingernail against the bottle cradled between her armpit and the couch. “Branch out.” 

You should say no. She’s had her mouth all over it. You do not know where she has been, but you are willing to bet it was unsavory. You shouldn’t have any trouble refusing; you don’t give into peer pressure any more than you to any other invalid argument, but you have already made several flimsy excuses. 

You very much do not want this girl to think you are afraid of her. 

“Alright,” you say, and lever yourself out of your seat. 

She tips the neck of the bottle upward but she doesn’t get up. She makes you go to her. Up close you can finally make out her features definitively--pointed nose, wide forehead, big white teeth. She is wearing blue lipstick, which is ridiculous. It’s rubbed off most of her mouth, still clinging to the corners. 

She keeps the bottle in the crook of her elbow, offering it to you with nothing but her eyebrows. You are forced to practically climb up her body to get to it. Her hair smells like amber up close. The bottle is warm from her body heat. 

You squint at the label, but the text is very small. You think you recognize the Smirnoff logo, though. 

“Cheers,” Vriska says. 

You are braced for it to be bad, but the assault on your taste buds is so cloyingly sweet that you spit it out--some onto the couch and some onto Vriska’s arm. She revs back into her creaky laugh. “C’mon, Pyrope! We just met and already you’re getting me wet.” 

“That is terrible!” You give the bottle another furtive sniff. “What is it it?” 

“Marshmallow vodka. Hey, if you weren’t basically blind you would have been able to read the label. And you could see how cute I am up close.” 

Terezi lets out a yelp of laughter. “I am sighted enough to tell that is a blatant lie.” 

Vriska whistles. “Savage burnsville.” 

Terezi takes another furtive sip. If she braces for it it’s alright. “If you’re going to meme at me, I’m going to need this.” 

Vriska is not cute in any sense of the word. She’s not pretty, either--not really. But you still like her face, now that you can see it. She is long-eyed and raw-boned. When she swallows you follow the motion down to her collarbone. You have the bizarre urge to put your fingers on it. 

“So, drinkable, right?” she says. 

“Barely.” You pass the bottle back. You are pressed close to her, your thighs touching. You could move away--the couch isn’t small--but somehow that feels like giving ground. And you aren’t in a surrendering mood. 

“So don’t you want to know how I could tell your eyesight is for shit?” Vriska asks, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and giving you the bottle back. 

“Do I need to ask? I wear very thick glasses and have been squinting at things all night.” 

“Hmm,” Vriska drums her fingers on the back of the couch. “Okay. So I’ll have to just guess something about your shitty DJ ex.” 

You very carefully do not let yourself react. “Nepeta again, I presume.” 

“Girl sure likes to overshare. With everybody else’s lives, at least. Not with her own, weirdly. I have no idea if she and Zahhak are fucking or if they just, like, scratch each other’s backs and pop zits. Why did you transfer schools?” 

You sigh. “I’ve been best friends with two boys since I was nine. I started dating one in high school. It ended disastrously. I dated the other the summer after my first year at college. That faded away like a particularly sexless coat of paint drying. They started dating each other last spring and are disgustingly in love. I needed a change of scenery.” 

Vriska laughs at you. 

Your face burns and acid bubbles in your throat. You are tipsy enough that you actually feel insulted. “What?” you snap. She has you on the defensive and you hate it. 

“Nothing! Just. Wow. Normcore. You seem more the type to, i don’t know, have fled from campus because you killed a man, instead of like, ‘my ex-boyfriends would rather suck each other’s dicks than mine’.” 

“I’m flattered.” 

You pass the bottle back and forth. The world narrows. Is the party even still happening? It can’t be very late, but the room is empty and the kitchen is quiet. You could be floating on a sofa in the void. The music is low and ambient, a mournful singer telling you that sometimes things don’t come full circle. After awhile you begin to feel queasy so you stop drinking, just float on the gusts of Vriska’s voice. Nothing she is saying is particularly interesting or coherent, but you are listening anyway. 

Half the time it feels less like you are watching her speak and more like you are remembering it. But that is ridiculous. You’ve never met this girl before. You are simply drunk. 

Vriska says, “Jesus christ.” She tosses the empty bottle onto the floor, and you think she might be about to vomit. Instead she turns back to you, smears her messy hair out of her face and says, “Are you ever going to kiss me, Pyrope?” 

Your heartbeat clangs through your entire body. “What?” 

Vriska snorts and flips her hair over her shoulder. It’s quite a gesture. She has a lot of hair. It overbalances her and she settles heavily against your side. Or she may have done that on purpose. 

“You’ve been staring at my mouth for like, an hour.” The mouth in question twists. “I mean, I know I have great lips. Every part of me is great, but--.” 

You are flushed, but her body is as warm as yours. The tingly numbness of inebriation makes it hard to tell where you end and she begins. You grab her chin. “Shut up. Just. Shut up.” 

Her mouth is burning hot and slimy wet. She slides long fingers into your hair and scratches your scalp. You can’t tell if the thrum inside you is desire or disgust.

“You are repulsive,” you tell her, and you don’t think you’re lying. 

Vriska laughs into your ear, bubbly hot. She bites your neck, over and over, sucks on every stinging mark. You have become one endless shiver. 

“You’re a pathetic wreck,” she says, and that isn’t a lie either. 

This girl makes you feel awful, but you have never felt so good about feeling bad. You left your last school to escape, to start over. That did not include flying straight into some new spider’s web. You had not planned for this. 

You _definitely_ hadn’t planned on being dragged down the hall and up a flight of stairs and into a dark bedroom, of teeth fastened in your shoulder and long fingers inside you, thumb circling your clit until your legs are shaking. She drags you to the edge and holds you there, makes you say her name again and again until you’re hoarse, until it feels like she has invaded every part of you. 

In the dark you are almost totally blind--your cones are worth shit and are the reason you will never have a driver’s license--but you think you can see her eyes, and through your fugue she has too many. Four, eight, a thousand. When you come it rattles you apart, sends you down into a dark universe from which you know there is no escape. 

When you wake up the next morning, hungover with a crick in your neck and scratches on the inside of your thighs, you are surprised to find that her bedroom is small and piled with heaps of laundry--dirty and clean mixed together--and broken bits of electronics. Like she takes things apart and loses interest before she can put them back together. It’s not that you wouldn’t expect her room to be a wreck; it had just seemed much bigger last night. Cavernous. 

You find your glasses on the pillow beside you, folded neatly. 

You go into the bathroom and pointedly don’t look in the mirror. You spend about thirty seconds deciding whether or not you are going to be sick, and when you settle on no you splash water on your face. Rooting through the cabinet you find nail polish remover, condoms, what is either a cudgel or a very fancy sex toy, and a broken pair of nail clippers. The bottle of ibuprofen is past its sell-by date, but you take two anyway. 

You make your unsteady way downstairs, following the sound of the sink running and what you hope is a coffee pot. The first floor is drenched in late morning light, dust motes tumbling around in the front hall. You have never felt more surreal in your life. 

You are expecting post-party chaos but this room is sparklingly clean. Probably Equius’s doing--he is washing dishes, wearing long rubber gloves. Vriska is sitting on the kitchen counter, tethered by her phone cord. You stop in the doorway. You had not prepared yourself to run into her so soon, although this is her house and you had been sleeping in her bed. 

“Why is there a glass dildo in your cabinet?” you ask by way of a morning greeting. Equius’s shoulders bunch together and he drops a plate. 

Vriska doesn’t look up from her phone. “Stop trying to embarrass me in front of my roommate, Pyrope.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “Or I won’t let you use it.” 

You want to ask what makes her think you’d even want to use it, but all that will do is inspire another witty rejoinder. “I need at least one cup of coffee before engaging in repartee.” 

Vriska flicks her fingers toward the pot. “It’s Zahhak’s.” 

“Do you mind?” you ask your roommate’s...whatever the fuck he is. 

He throws a grin over his shoulder. Or, well. The corner of his lips are turned upward. “Sure. Be my guest.” 

Vriska watches you pour yourself a mug of coffee--you can feel her gaze between your shoulderblades. When you take a sip, she makes a gagging noise. 

“And you drink it black! I don’t touch that shit.” 

“Yeah, you only drink super smelly tea.” Nepeta is sitting at the kitchen table, looking decidedly the worse for wear. Her hair’s a mess and you are pretty sure that’s blood spatter on her blouse. 

“Why the fuck are you still here, Leijon?” Vriska asks. “I’m going to start charging rent.” 

“I had to make sure you didn’t murder my roommate! Are you okay?” 

You realize, with some guilt, that Nepeta was here all night because of you, despite the fact you had told her emphatically that you did not want to be out past two in the morning. You don’t even know what you did with your phone. 

“I’m sorry to have worried you,” you say. “But I’m fine.” 

Vriska is grinning at you. You can feel it. She looks significantly less hungover than you feel, which is absurd because she had far more to drink. In the light of day and sobriety, she is pretty normal. A woman in her early twenties with long legs, great skin, and a mane of hair that very much needs to be washed. She’s wearing leggings and a big lumpy t-shirt with something written in French on the front. Very normal. 

You meet her eyes and feel an echo of that chilly thrill down your spine and in other, far more exhausted places. You hate that your face is hot, but you don’t let yourself look away. You have no precedent for awkward mornings after, which is what you get for only sleeping with your friends. Karkat had bitched that you didn’t have any cereal, and you’d woken up to Dave drawing ducks on your back with a felt-tip pen. 

_“Don’t you mean ‘dicks’?”_

_“No, I mean ducks, rez. What am I, an iPhone?”_

She goes back to her texting and you go back your coffee. When you’ve taken the last swallow you ask Nepeta, “Uh. Are you ready to go?” You really need a shower. 

“Just waiting for you!” Nepeta hops up, scampering over to kiss Equius on the cheek, triggering the least grimace-like expression he’s made so far this morning. Then she looks between you and Vriska, who is still pointedly ignoring both of you. 

“Uh, I’ll just go put my shoes on.” Equius follows her out. Your skin is crawling with a million awkward bugs. 

Vriska slides off the counter, one long foot touching the ground, then the other. “So I’ll pick you up at eight?” 

You tilt your head. “Excuse me?” 

“Me. Will pick you. Up at eight. Since I’m the one with the car.” 

You would like to have words with whoever gave this girl the keys to a vehicle. “I was certainty not drunk enough last night to have forgotten making plans. I have to study tonight. I have classes tomorrow.” 

Vriska’s laugh is as loud sober as it is drunk. You automatically press a hand to your aching forehead. Her eyes narrow. “Like any of your classes could be as important or awesome as hanging out with me.” 

“I’m not going out with you.” 

“Just keep telling yourself that, Pyrope.” 

You waver at the threshold to the hall. This is not a good idea. This will not be a healthy relationship. This will not make you your best self; this will crash and burn. 

But you’re going to do it anyway. 

\--

_You’re still on my mind somehow_  
your fits and your shades of blue  
There’s no way to go back now  
Couldn’t get back even if we wanted to 

_We were trying to make it work_  
You were sleeping in my shirt  
I was hoping that you cared  
I was distant, I was scared 

_Sometimes things don’t come full circle._

\--"Arcadia", The Kite String Tangle

**Author's Note:**

> homestuck blog is skaian-heretic on tumblr!


End file.
